Disk drives typically include a spindle motor for rotating one or more disks in order to read data from and write data to surfaces of the disks. The spindle motor includes a stator having a plurality of coils, and a rotor having one or more rotor magnets and a rotating motor hub on which the disks may be mounted and clamped. Different coils of the stator are alternately energized to form a changing electromagnetic field that pulls/pushes the rotor magnets, thereby rotating the motor hub. Rotation of the motor hub, in turn, results in rotation of the disks mounted thereto.
Disks used in different disk drive platforms may have a variety of different dimensions. In fact, even two disk drive platforms having the same form factor (e.g., 3.5″, 2.5″, 1″, etc.) may utilize disks with different dimensions in order to meet application specific requirements. As a result, in conventional disk drive manufacturing processes, different components are used in each disk drive platform in order to accommodate the particular dimensions of their respective disks. Unfortunately, significant engineering resources are therefore expended to create new components, such as spindle motors and motor hubs, which perform very similar tasks, albeit for disks of varying dimensions.
There is therefore a need for an improved disk drive motor hub.